Cisco commits to bridge the digital skills gap in India

Cisco hosted its sixth edition of the Cisco India Summit (CIS) 2019 on 29th and 30th July 2019 to celebrate the company's confidence and belief in building partnerships. During the Summit, Cisco announced the expansion of its Networking Academy program to train one million students in India by 2025. This commitment is aligned to Cisco’s goal of positively impacting 50 million people in India by 2025 and is aimed at creating a pool of highly-skilled technology professionals who will accelerate India’s digital transformation.

Cisco Networking Academy in India is one of the largest programs for Cisco worldwide. Across 583 academies nationwide, more than 350,000 Indian students have been trained since its inception. The skills-development program is a cloud-delivered, scalable, high-quality program that helps students learn how to design, build, secure, and maintain digital infrastructure. The Cisco-developed curriculum include courses on IT essentials, networking, cybersecurity, programming and Internet of Things. In 2016, the Cisco had committed to training 250,000 students by 2020, which was achieved a year ahead of schedule.

Through this program, schools, colleges, universities, vocational institutions, govt, and non-profit organizations are provided a Cisco developed curriculum IoT that can be integrated with the institution’s own educational offerings. Cisco also supports government education institutes in providing training on networking and cybersecurity skills aimed at improving the employability of engineering graduates.

At CIS 2019, the company accentuated other skill development initiatives that were implemented this year. In July, Cisco, Accenture and Quest Alliance signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Directorate General of Training (DGT) and the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to bolster digital skill development and collaboration for India's growing digital economy. The initiative targets up to 1.5 million students in Industrial Training Institutes (ITI's) across the country via the Bharat Skills portal. It includes 240 hours of training on digital workplace readiness, including creative problem solving and use of data in decision-making. Since digital fluency is also a key focus, this program has been optimized for mobile phones and encourages on-the-go self-learning.

Also in July, NASSCOM-Cisco thingQbator completed its first year. The program fostered innovation, nurtured entrepreneurship and helped create innovative technology solutions for social good. Over 600 students from technical institutions such as Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITMK) - Trivandrum, IIT – BHU – Varanasi, Amrita University - Coimbatore, Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women – Delhi, and Trident Academy of Technology - Bhubaneswar, gained firsthand experience in using high-end technology tools. The purpose of the program was the enablement of socially conscious entrepreneurship among students. The maker spaces enabled students to gain knowledge in technologies such as 3D printing, LoRa gateways, IoT, Augmented Reality (AR), Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to conceive digital solutions for real-world business and community problems.

VC Gopalratnam, SVP-IT and CIO-International, Cisco, said, “The digital economy is a growth enabler and holds massive potential for India. While it has been widely discussed that digital adoption is forecasted at $1 trillion monetary opportunities for organizations, it is the quality of benefits that it brings that is most significant. Through strategic collaboration between governments, businesses, and NGO’s, we extend our experience in networking technology to elevate the standards of living and foster sustainable economic development.”